Yuri Suhl; Author, Yiddish Poet
Yuri Suhl, who wrote poetry in Yiddish and children’s books in English, has died at a New York hospital. He was 78 and had lived most of his life in New York City.
A native of Poland, he came to the United States in the 1920s, graduated from a two-year night school and began to teach English to the children of Yiddish-speaking immigrants.
His first writings were his Yiddish poetry, followed by several children’s books including “Simon Boom Gives a Wedding” and “The Man Who Made Everyone Late.”
His other works include the popular “They Fought Back: The Story of Jewish Resistance in Nazi Europe.” That work was praised as a landmark contribution to Holocaust literature, and Suhl spent more than five years documenting it before it was published in 1967.
His other works included “Eloquent Crusader: Ernestine Rose,” a biography of the Polish-born feminist, and two autobiographical novels: “One Foot in America” and “Cowboy on a Wooden Horse.”
He was a trustee of the fund set up for the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed as Soviet spies.
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